I read an article some years back that said that whatever friends you make by 20-something would be the only friends you’d make from then on.

Scary! Especially considering that most of the s**t that torpedoes longtime relationships typically happens after thirty. LOL!

When hard times come, does it automatically mean that they are solely meant to harm a person or destroy their lives? Or could those same hard times be there to shape and mold that person in a way that no other method could do or could do as completely and quickly?

I was not-so-silently fuming at no one but myself. I’d been here before and felt the cold, dark or dryness of having pushed the ‘grace period’ mentality only to find there was no grace period. I knew better but I insisted and no one was really affected by that recurring obstinance but me. I was furious – at the injustice but mostly just at myself. And then a memory hit me. I remembered another time when one day made all the difference in the world and utterly changed the trajectory of my life forever.

She’d gone out with this man several times and, try as she might, she couldn’t bring herself to get into him. On paper, he was great. And she knew it. So did he. But she was a vibrant woman still ascending into her prime (btw…those old beliefs that a woman HITS her prime in her mid-30s are horribly misleading. if truth be told, sliding into the midpoint of your third decade signals the START of hitting your prime, ladies, and, from what I hear, it goes on and on and on from there... You’re welcome 😉) and he…well he was a guy who knew he looked good on paper.

Every time you become romantically involved with someone, what many fail to fully acknowledge is that most people have had several romantic relationships before you came along. Usually, what has been left is a series of half-made buildings – some of them greatly decayed/decaying because they were half-erected and abandoned so long ago. Someone else moved in and didn’t necessarily start building on the last erection (no pun/all puns intended) but, rather likely began building in another part of the ‘city’.

Some time ago, I had a friend who shared a house with me on alternative days/weeks when I was in town and vice versa. On one of my trips in town that coincided with one of her trips out of town, I arrived to the house to find it a mess and all the food I’d left 10 days earlier either eaten, given away or tossed out. I was a little low on cash, tired from traveling, and possessed little to no desire to go grocery shopping as soon as I got back. When I asked about the missing food and general ‘ugh’ of the house, I got a plate of evasive answers paired with a juicy slice of remorselessness washed down with a tall glass of ‘get over it…I already have’.